Sebastián Gil-Riaño

Assistant Professor

Fall 2016

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Curriculum Vitæ

Education

Ph.D. University of Toronto

I am a historian of transnational science focusing on scientific conceptions of race, culture, and indigeneity in the twentieth century. Through multi-sited and transnational perspectives my work investigates how scientific articulations of human diversity have been used to both legitimize and confront political formations in the modern world.

My research approaches these topics from the perspective of Latin America and the global South. From this southern standpoint, I challenge the conventional geographies and periodization that have long shaped historical understandings of race and racism.

Research Interests

Comparative histories of racial science, anti-racism in science, postcolonial studies of science, histories of modernisation and international development, history of social science, history of nutritional science, Latin American history

“Sociology,” in A Companion to the History of American Science, edited by Georgina M. Montgomery and Mark A. Largent. (West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016), 263-275.

“Perturbed by “race”: Antiracism, Science, and Education in UNESCO during the Cold War,” in UNESCO Without Borders: Educational Campaigns for International Understanding, edited by Aigul Kulnazarova and Christian Ydesen. (Routledge Press, 2016)

Teaching Fields

History of the human sciencesGlobal histories of scienceGender, race, and scienceSTM in modern Latin America